With the advent of advanced information society in recent years, a large amount of data has become handled by computers, and there have increasing facilities such as data centers in which a great number of computers are installed in a single room and managed in a collective manner. For instance, in a data center, a large number of racks (server racks) are installed in a computer room, and a plurality of computers (servers) are housed in each of the racks. Jobs are organically distributed to those computers according to operational states of the computers, and a large quantity of jobs is efficiently processed.
However, computers generate a great deal of heat in associated with operating. When the temperature in the computer increases, malfunction, failure, or performance degradation may be caused. To address this, cooling fans are used to take cool air into the racks and discharge the heat generated in the computers to the outside of the racks.
On the other hand, a great amount of electric power is consumed in the data center and reduction of power consumption is demanded from a viewpoint of energy saving. In order to prevent a computer from causing failure and malfunction due to the heat, cooling fans might be constantly rotated at a maximum revolution speed. However, since a great number of cooling fans are installed in the data center, rotating the cooling fans constantly at a maximum revolution speed causes the power consumption to increase, and reduction of the power consumption is not achieved.
Therefore, in order to reduce the power consumed in a facility such as a data center, it is important to operate cooling equipment efficiently according to the operational states of the computers.
Note that techniques relating to the present application are disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication Nos. 2011-257116 and 2002-268775.